


Mother's Love

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Domestic Violence, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-04 03:03:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mother doesn't mean to hurt them, Regina is sure of it, but she hurts them all the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mother's Love

**Author's Note:**

> This is a response to all the people who say Regina's response to Snow was overreaction. Abused children are often unable to take out their anger and desperation on the one who abuses them, so they turn it on a more vulnerable target. That's what Regina does with Snow.

Once upon a time, they were happy. Once upon a time, her mother had no magic. Once upon a time, her father didn’t flinch when her mother walked into the room. Once upon a time, Regina could remember being told to behave without pain that cut down to her bones

That was a long time ago.

Regina helped her father from the room.

Mother was in a foul temper after learning her first choice of suitor for Regina had been snapped up by a Duchess’s daughter from the neighbouring county. Her father tried to comfort her, and now, he was trembling in pain, his arm around Regina’s shoulder.

“Here,” Regina said softly, helping him sit down in a chair by the fire. “The warmth should make the ache fade quicker.”

He nodded, closing his eyes. He used to smile when he looked at her mother. He always doted on her. But Regina hadn’t seen him smile for a long time, and the lines around his eyes and the grey streaks in his hair were increasing by the day.

“She doesn’t mean to,” he said quietly, holding out shivering hands over the flames. “She just gets upset.”

“I know, daddy.” Regina drew the footstool up beside the chair and took one of his hands between hers, warming it with her own. For father, the pain was always ice-cold, as if mother was trying to freeze him out, but for Regina, it was tight, constricting, binding her down.

His fingers were twitching beneath hers, and she lifted his hand to press it to her cheek. His skin felt cold.

“I’ll be all right, dear,” he said, recognising the look on her face. “It’s only a little pain.”

She wanted to protest, to argue that mother had no right to do such a thing to him, but she knew the arguments too well. Mother only meant well, she only got upset, she had a temper but it burned out quickly, she would be fine by dinner. It was only a little pain, he would say, but it was only a little pain all the time.

Of course, they couldn’t tell mother how much it upset them. That would only upset her, so it was better to try to make sure she wasn’t upset. As long as they did what she wanted, as long as they didn’t try and stop her from using her beloved magic, or touch the potions and bottles in her chamber, or suggest that maybe, she could come riding with them both, it would all be fine.

“Wine?” Regina offered quietly, setting his hand down on the arm of the chair, her own resting lightly over it. “Or something stronger?”

Her father’s lips turned up at the corners, but it wasn’t a smile, not really. “You know me too well, dear,” he murmured.

She leaned over the arm of the chair to kiss his cheek, then rose and went to the cabinet. It was stocked with all the ostentatious wines mother thought they needed to look respectable, but there was a crystal decanter as well, with the brandy that her father used to medicate himself when the pain was lingering too long.

She poured a measure into the glass. The lip of the decanter rattled against the rim of the glass and she grit her teeth, trying to stop her own hands from shaking. She wasn’t hurt, after all, and daddy didn’t need more to worry about.

She returned to his side, sitting down on the footstool, and wrapped his hand around the glass with her own. Experience told her he wouldn’t be able to hold it himself yet, so her fingers closed around his, warmer and steadier.

“Thank you, dear,” he said quietly, looking into the fire.

“We should go riding,” she offered after a few moments of silence. “The weather is meant to be clearing tomorrow, so we could take a long ride up the north fields. You have that new mare to break in.”

He looked at her fondly. “You would keep your old man company?”

She nodded, smiling. “How can I get better, if you’re not there to show me how?”

For a moment, a genuine smile crossed his face, rare and precious as a diamond. “I’m a lucky man, Regina,” he said, lifting his other hand to touch her cheek, “to have such a strong and brave and beautiful daughter.”

“Daddy,” she protested, blushing.

“You know I don’t waste my words, dear,” he murmured. “One day, you’re going to set the world alight, I know it.”

Regina tried to smile, but in her heart of hearts, she knew that couldn’t possibly happen, not with mother setting out her course for her. No doubt, she would be married to a suitable man of a suitable station with a suitable rank and position for her to provide suitable heirs. Mother would want to be a dowager, if she had her way.

Her father gazed at her. “Come now,” he said, brushing her cheek with his thumb. “It’s not so terrible as that.” He looked around. “We have a wonderful home. We have food. We have comfort. We have one another. That’s more than many.”

Regina took his hand between hers. Her lips were turning up, and he didn’t look closely enough to see her eyes. Maybe he chose not to. Maybe, he just needed to see her smile, then they could pretend that he was barely able to stand.

“She’ll stop soon,” he murmured. “The magic. She can give it up, any time she likes. She only uses it to make sure that we have everything we need.”

“Everything we need,” Regina echoed quietly, watching as he drew his hand from hers and wrapped it around the glass with his other. The liquid was trembling in the glass, even now, and she had to look away. “We have everything we need.”

The only thing they didn’t have, she thought as her father drained the glass and stared into the depths of the fire, was the mother that they both loved and missed.


End file.
